A Bend In The River

Indar comes to the town as “a guest of the government” (113) and plans to stay for several months, working at the polytechnic and staying in the Domain. Salim hasn’t seen him for eight years, since they talked before Indar left their coastal home to study in England. Salim feels inadequate compared to his friend, who has the clothes and manners of a European. “It’s like old times for you, Salim,” (111) Indar says. Salim shows Indar around the town, and realizes there is little to show him: “I was literally just showing Indar a lot of rubbish” (115). Indar takes Salim to the Domain, to show him the other, upscale side of life. Salim notes that Indar’s house is furnished “showroom style” (117) with air conditioners in every room. Indar has been given a servant with the house, a boy dressed in the white uniform dictated by the Big Man. 

Salim has been dismissive of the Domain; however, with Indar, he discovers:

[T]heir life, their world of bungalows and air conditioners and holiday ease, [and] catching in their educated talk the names of famous cities, I swung the other way and began to see how shut in and shabby and stagnant we in the town would have seemed (117). 

Salim goes to hear Indar give an English lesson to the polytechnic students, including Ferdinand. For the first time, Salim sees a portrait of the president, dressed not in military uniform, but as an African chief. The class turns into a group discussion about Africa. Salim admires how well Indar handles the students, even when Ferdinand challenges him. After the class, Salim and Indar continue the discussion. Salim feels a space growing between them that represents their collective past. Indar repeats something he had said to Salim years before: that “he had learned to trample on the past” (124). Salim’s unease about the Domain bubbles back up, but he acknowledges that the “social excitements” (125) continue to draw him back.

Indar invites Salim to a party at the home of his friends in the Domain, Raymond and Yvette. Raymond works for the president and has been sent to the Domain to “keep an eye on things. He’s the Big Man’s white man” (125). Salim is surprised to discover that Raymond’s wife, Yvette, is in her late twenties and about the same age as Salim himself. He notices that while she is dressed in trousers and a European-made silk blouse, her feet are bare, which feels intimate to Salim. 

The house is similar to Indar’s but all the stuffy sitting room furniture has been moved and replaced with cushions and mats, creating a casual atmosphere. Yvette tells Indar and Salim that Raymond is working in his study and will join the party later. Several people at the party are dancing. Salim has never seen people dancing together like this and is moved by it, noting, “I wanted to sink into the sweetness; I didn’t want anything to spoil the mood” (127). The song “Barbara Allen,” by Joan Baez, comes on. Salim is deeply moved by the beauty of Baez’s voice, which seems to add more magic to the already magical evening. Indar shows Salim a book in which Yvette and Raymond are acknowledged as the author’s hosts in the capital city. Salim feels he has truly found the experience akin to Nazruddin’s descriptions of the high life in the old days of the town: “Even before the songs ended I felt I had found the kind of life I wanted; I never wanted to be ordinary again” (129). 

Salim dances with Yvette and begins to feel an awakening sense of possibilities. Then Raymond joins the party. Salim is immediately struck by how much older he is than his wife; he speculates there must be 30 years between them. Raymond is gloomy. He has been thinking about truth and asks, “Do you think we will ever get to know the truth about what has happened in Africa in the last hundred or even fifty years?” (130). Indar and Raymond talk shop, and Indar reassures Raymond that he is the only author the president reads. Raymond tells the story about how he met the president as a young man. Then Raymond praises the president for all his achievements, including bringing peace and unity to the country “without coercion” (133) by using ideas from many political systems. Raymond says he was chagrined when the president began dressing in African chief’s garb in his portraits and that he told the president so. The president replied that five years ago he would have agreed, but that now the people “want something else. So they no longer see a photograph of a soldier. They see a photograph of an African” (134). Raymond tells the party guests that he is working on a book assembling all the president’s speeches. He leaves the room to return to his study and in parting tells the guests in an echo of Salim’s friend, Mahesh, “We have no idea where the continent is going. We can only carry on” (137). 

Salim and Indar go down to the river in the moonlight and talk over what Raymond said at the party. They also discuss the president. Salim confesses to Indar that he came to the town to chase the dream of the good life he’d heard about from Nazruddin, and that he then “got stuck” (139). Indar tells Salim that Raymond is in trouble, that he has fallen out of favor in the capital. He says, “The Big Man is going his own way, and he no longer needs Raymond. Everybody knows that, but Raymond thinks they don’t” (140). Hearing this makes Salim think not of Raymond but of Yvette, and the spell the party has cast over him.

Indar speaks of his experiences in England, and how his hopes that he could make a new life evaporated there. He tells Salim, “I hadn’t understood to what extent our civilization had also been our prison” (142). He points out that “[w]e have no means of understanding a fraction of the thought and science and philosophy and law that have gone to make that outside world” (142). He was an outsider in England, and treated as such. For example, the “Appointments Committee” (144) helping the university students find jobs after graduation has nothing viable for him. After university, he goes to the Indian High Commission to try for an embassy job. He is told that, having lived in Africa, he would have to apply for Indian citizenship to be eligible for a job. Belonging nowhere, Indar decides to return to Africa as “a man adrift” (151), who “was going to surrender [his] manhood to nobody” (151). He has now been back in Africa for five years. Since his return he has discovered his value as “a man without a side” (154). He shares with Salim his philosophy about Africa and his recent undertaking to bring Africans who are refugees as a result of colonialization and war to the new African centers of learning to become educated and “make a start on the true African revolution” (154). The chapter ends with Indar’s statements and doesn’t share Salim’s immediate response with the reader.

Salim tells us that Indar began telling his story the evening of the party, and that he continued it in fits and starts over time. Salim sees Indar and Yvette always together and is troubled by both of them: “I had trouble with both their personalities: I could pin down neither” (156). He acknowledges that he envied Indar’s style. Now, Salim feels protective of Indar and doesn’t want to see him hurt by losing “his only asset” (156): the touches of glamour he picked up when he was educated abroad. Salim observes that Indar becomes irritable as his time in the Domain is nearly over. He rages at Salim about his friends Mahesh and Shoba, whom he deems as false, and ignorant of Indar’s experiences. Salim still feels the hope of the good life the Domain represents, and is aware that when Indar leaves, he will be separated from that life once again. 

Ferdinand is also leaving the town; he’s headed to the capital for an administrative training job. Salim picks him up in the Domain and drives him to the dock to catch the steamer. Salim notices that many of the officials in the town are female: “The President had decided to honour as many women as possible; and he had done so by making them government servants, not always with clear duties” (159). We’re told the president has done this to honor his dead mother, who had worked as a hotel maid. Ferdinand and Salim are stopped repeatedly and asked to show papers. At first, Ferdinand is prevented from getting on the steamer and the two men are unsuccessful negotiating with the officials. Then, for no clear reason, Ferdinand is allowed to board. 

Salim makes a joke about what was needed to board the steamer in colonial times, but Ferdinand doesn’t laugh. Salim thinks, “To Ferdinand the colonial past had vanished” (161). As Salim and Ferdinand peek into the cabine de luxe to see what it looks like, they hear a commotion. Indar staggers into the cabin, carrying a heavy box of groceries and complaining angrily in English. Yvette is with him, carrying his briefcase. Indar is angry about having to take the steamer. He had planned to leave by airplane, but it was commandeered by the president, “[a]nd no one knows when he is going to send it back” (164). The little group goes to drink a beer in the steamer’s bar. Indar says goodbye to Yvette, telling her he will check on the status of Raymond’s book when he gets to the capital, though he is not hopeful of getting any information. They hug, and Salim notices the formality of the embrace.

Ferdinand says goodbye to Salim with a simple, “Salim” (166). Salim and Yvette watch the steamer depart form the dock. Salim reflects that yesterday, when he thought he’d seen Indar for the final time, he’d felt he was being left behind, with Indar going to a better place. As he watches the steamer depart, however, Salim thinks he might be the lucky one: “The place where it was all going on after all was where we were, in the town on the riverbank. Indar was the man who had been sent away. The hard journey was his” (167).

Salim and Yvette leave the dock and go to the Tivoli, a restaurant that caters to Europeans. The African locals don’t eat there, but “you couldn’t forget where you were. The photograph of the President was about three feet high” (168). Salim thinks, “even here at the Tivoli we were reminded that we all in various ways depended on him” (168). Their conversation turns to Indar. Yvette says she met Indar here, in the town. She says, “You live your life. A stranger appears. He is an encumbrance. You don’t need him. But the encumbrance can become a habit” (170). Salim thinks he has no experience with women like Yvette, and he tells her how much he was affected by her party. As they leave, Yvette invites Salim to lunch the next day, saying she’s had to invite a colleague of Raymond’s, which Raymond finds stressful. Salim thinks about the steamer, noting that by now, it would be about 15 miles downriver. 

When Salim arrives at Yvette and Raymond’s house the next day, he discovers she has cancelled the lunch without letting him know. The house is nothing like he remembers from the night of the party. It is much more ordinary and, in the bright light of day, is full of the flaws that show it was built poorly and in a hurry. He feels relief at being released from the romantic spell of his earlier experience of the house as well as fear of being connected to Yvette through the ordinary aspects of her life. Yvette enters the room where Salim is waiting and Salim’s relief and fear disappear: “The surprise then, as always for me, was herself” (171). Yvette seems amused that she forgot to let Salim know lunch was cancelled and goes to the kitchen to make them some scrambled eggs. Her lines from the Tivoli comes back to Salim: “You live your life. A stranger appears. He is an encumbrance” (172). They discuss Raymond’s writing. Salim senses Raymond’s outsider status and how that must be for Yvette. As Salim leaves, he invites Yvette to the Hellenic Club the next day. She agrees and gives him some magazines containing articles written by Raymond. As he heads home, Salim reflects that the Domain has lost its glamour for him and now seems like “[o]nly a life in the bush” (174). 

The next afternoon, Yvette visits Salim’s flat and they begin an affair. As he embraces her, Salim observes that Yvette neither encourages or rejects him, but accepts him with resignation, “accepting a new encumbrance” (174). Salim has never had sex with a woman he hasn’t paid for or picked up in a nightclub. He has pornographic magazines and his fantasies of women have been “of conquest and degradation, with the woman as the willing victim” (174). With Yvette, Salim feels as though he is having an entirely new experience with a woman. After she goes home, Salim goes to a nightclub, sitting outside to take in the scene and the passers-by. He sees a young woman crying out as she is led away by two men from the Youth Guard: “This was their new ‘Morals Patrol’” (178). 

When he goes home, Salim sees Metty, whom he thinks seems sad. Salim reflects that Metty should have stayed on the coast where there were people like himself: “Here he is lost” (178). The next day, Yvette telephones Salim to say she will meet him at his flat at lunchtime. They spend a three-hour lunchtime in bed together. When Salim returns to the shop, he is angry to find Metty has not reopened after lunch then quickly remembers Metty has gone to the customs house to clear the goods that arrived on the steamer. 

Salim reads the articles by Raymond that Yvette gave him after their first lunch. He is surprised to discover that Raymond has relied heavily on information from colonial newspapers, which Salim knows “tell a special kind of truth” (181). In an article about missionaries, Salim discovers Raymond did not even visit the places he discusses in the article. Salim thinks about Raymond that he:

knew so much, had researched so much […] [and] had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazruddin or even Mahesh; he had nothing like Father Huismans’ instinct for the strangeness and wonder of this place (182).